Dueling Pharmacy Groups Launch Fresh Attacks at Each Other

The lobby group for pharmacy benefit managers is accusing community drug stores of using a double standard for attacking them while at the same time objecting to federal plans to collect drug-price data for Medicaid.
“Despite recent press revelations of its ‘top secret’ lobbying campaign to maintain the confidentiality of its own Medicaid pricing information the [...]

PBMs, pharmacists feud over drug costs

Pharmacy-benefits managers, or PBMs, and independent pharmacists are using a recently released AARP “RX Price Watch Report” as an opportunity to engage in a battle of words over which group is more responsible for rising prescription drug costs.
The AARP report, released earlier this month, found that 2009 retail prices for 217 prescription drugs widely used [...]

Moving in on mail order

As more Americans receive super-sized prescriptions for their medicines, retail pharmacies and their mail-order rivals are fighting for a bigger piece of the pill bottle.
Pharmacy giant Walgreens is promoting 90-day prescriptions at its stores in Minnesota, making the Twin Cities the third national market where the Illinois-based chain is trying to publicize the option.
Retailers generally [...]

Aetna’s CEO Discusses Health Overhaul, CVS Caremark Deal

Obama isn’t antibusiness, Aetna CEO Williams said, but the administration may lack understanding of what it takes to run a business.
In an interview with WSJ’s Deputy Managing Editor, Alan Murray, Williams said he worries about possible “unintended consequences” that might come out of the roughly 2,000-page health-care overhaul.
Williams, who has been a vocal advocate of [...]

Drugstores, pharmacy-benefit managers vie for prescriptions

Bob Schreiber’s business in Morrisville, Burns Pharmacy, was briefly famous as the setting for a scene in Signs, the M. Night Shyamalan movie that depicts a scary alien invasion threatening a Bucks County farm family.Nearly a decade later, the disturbing threat to Schreiber and at least some of his customers isn’t an alien.
It’s the growing [...]

Community Pharmacists Seek Stricter Transparency Rules For PBMs In Exchanges

Community pharmacists are urging the Obama administration to impose tough transparency requirements on pharmacy benefit managers as it oversees the health reform law’s new insurance exchanges, saying disclosure requirements that the Office of Personnel Management has proposed for federal employees’ health plans should be used as a guide.
The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents PBMs, [...]

REMS For Opioids, LABAs May Be Driven By PBM “Feedback” Mechanism

FDA is considering whether pharmacy benefit managers and their databases could be used to increase safe prescribing of long-acting and sustained-release opioids and long-acting beta agonists.
A contract study of prescribing patterns for the two classes of drugs and the development of strategies to promote safer prescribing practices could be part of FDA’s efforts to curtail [...]

EHR Rules Loosen Requirements; Multi-Campus Hospitals Get One Payment

HHS made it easier for hospitals and doctors to receive incentive payments for using electronic health records by reducing the number of requirements they must meet to be considered “meaningful users” of EHR in a pair of rules released today. But hospital are disappointed that CMS will give a single base payment to hospitals with [...]